Mobile Phone Books R GR8

Do U like 2 txt? Maybe you're only a few thumb twitches away from being a famous author then. There is a fascinating article over on the NYT (via Clive on Collision Detection) relating how of the top 10 selling books in Japan last year, 5 were 'cellphone' books. (I hate that American term, what does it even mean, they're mobile phones damn it!) That means they were written on mobile phones. More then a few cellphone books have been punched out by Japanese teenagers on the train and in between classes. Cellphone books have grown into a whole sub-genre of Japanese literature, which stylistically reflect their creation. They tend to have much less flowery descriptions and long-winded prose, apparently a staple of classical Japanese literature, and are more dialogue heavy. The style is distinctive and popular enough, that people are writing cell phone books on their computers now, and some even in long hand.

I'm not sure I could stomach a whole book written that way, but I imagine the differences between proper and texting language are more subtle in Japanese. I know that I'm not as fussed NEmore when I see txting language away from the mobile screen, which is becoming more common. What is really cool about these books is that the technology has influenced the way we write. Technology has always affected the way we produce our culture, but because it changed at such a drastically slower rate, no one really noticed that much. Think about the stylistic influence of the hand-held camera. Once the technology allowed for film-making to go mobile, we eventually got used to the 'shaky' style in documentaries, such that now the shaky aesthetic is associated with greater realism. I wonder what aspect of our cultural expression will evolve next thanks to technological change?